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Your University, Your City

Since its founding in 1906, Suffolk University has made a commitment to provide its students with unparalleled experiences and opportunities. Explore our unique downtown Boston location, and then consider the many paths your life might take from here.

Getting Started

We’re excited that you want to learn more about Suffolk, and we think you’ll like what you find. Whether you’re looking into colleges or graduate school programs, we’re eager to help answer your questions and walk you through the application process.

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A Community of Learning

As you start your academic journey, you’ll find a supportive network of faculty, staff, and classmates ready to help you succeed. We let you chart the course your education takes, from traditional classes enriched by real-world experiences to research projects, study abroad, internships, and more.

Life As We Know It

Suffolk places you smack in the heart of Boston, with countless activities at hand and unexpected opportunities around every corner. Whether you’re commuting or living on campus, you’ll find yourself making connections and getting involved.

An Extended Family

When you graduate from Suffolk, you join a strong alumni community that will continue to enrich your life. More than 70,000 living Suffolk alumni stay connected with each other and the University, supporting their alma mater—including current students—in a whole bunch of ways.

Michael Smith, BSBA '61, and Larry Smith, BSBA '65 have pledged $3 million to support Suffolk’s athletics program and to further their student scholarship funding.

Whether you're a student-athlete, an alum, or just looking for the latest game times, you'll find plenty of excitement in Suffolk athletics. We believe that athletic participation and competition are important aspects of the college experience. Lessons discovered through athletic participation contribute to success in a student's college years as well as in their future professional and personal experiences.

Invest in Excellence

Each graduate and friend of Suffolk University has the potential to make Suffolk even greater. We encourage giving at every level, with an emphasis on scholarships for a new generation of Suffolk students. Thank you so much for your support.

Law Student Gains Perspective from Military’s Life Lessons

When he graduated from high school in 2006, Jerome Hanley seemed to be tacking toward a career in technology, design, or engineering. He enrolled at technical college, but soon decided he needed to change course. “I realized I still had a lot of growing up to do,” he explains. “I wasn’t getting out of college what I should have, and I didn’t want to be wasting anybody’s time.”

After considering his options, Hanley made the decision to serve his country. Joining the Marines “had always been something I wanted to do,” he says. “Not something I had to do, but something that, if I didn’t do it, I’d regret for the rest of my life.” And so, at age 20, Hanley enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.

Gaining perspective

Hanley spent the next five years as a member of the 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines, where he attained the rank of corporal. He served as a scout sniper during two major tours of duty, first in Afghanistan, then as part of a Marine Expeditionary Unit sailing throughout the Mediterranean. In addition to the common military virtues of discipline and agility, his tours conferred on him a hard-earned sense of perspective.

Recalling the ordeals of losing comrades and being wounded in action, Hanley says: “One of the things it taught me is to value the time that you have with people and never take it for granted.” He punctuates that insight with an understated summation: “When you lose people like that, it definitely opens your eyes a little bit.”

Jerome Hanley, Musa Qala, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, 2011

A new life in law

After leaving active duty, Hanley resumed his undergraduate studies, completing his bachelor’s degree at UMass Boston. Now he felt prepared to tackle his next big ambition: law school.

“When I was considering going to law school, I knew I wanted to stay local in Boston,” Hanley recalls. “Everyone I knew said Suffolk had an invaluable network in the city. I’ve talked to numerous judges who are Suffolk grads, people at the firm where I work are Suffolk grads. Everywhere you go you meet someone in the legal community from Suffolk. It seemed like the right place to go.”

Now in his second year, Hanley is engaging with the law school experience with the same commitment he applied to his military service. In addition to going to class full-time at night, he works 30 hours a week in an internship at the Boston law firm of Prince Lobel Tye. He also reserves time for serving as vice president of the Suffolk Law Veterans Association (SLVA). The SLVA president, Justin Rhuda, is an old high school friend of Hanley’s and also a veteran of the Marine Corps; when the vice-president’s position opened up, Rhuda asked Hanley to take it on. Hanley is currently involved in planning the SLVA’s annual alumni networking event.

Today, Hanley envisions a career that harks back to his original technological orientation. “My goal from the beginning has been to go into intellectual property litigation,” he says, an aspiration that he is fostering through involvement with Suffolk’s Journal of High Technology Law. Practicing in IP law will require still more study, says Hanley. “To sit for the patent bar, I need to earn more hard-science credit hours in something like physics.” Asked where he might accomplish this next mission, he says: “Suffolk would be good.”